Article by Bronwyn Boyer

It seems Beverley Brewer was destined to be a writer, given the remarkable insights she shares in her memoir, Dance Into The Light.

As a child, Brewer loved playing under tree canopies in the ravines of her Toronto neighbourhoods. And having a family cottage in Muskoka gave her an urban-rural existence that shaped her creative intellect. In 2020, Brewer retired to Muskoka, seeking a sanctuary from a torrent of upheaval.

“I feel like I've transitioned to being very much a Muskoka person,” she says. “In my heart of hearts, I always knew that I was going to live here.”

After completing programs at Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology and Brock University for Adult Education, Brewer thrived in her career as an educator and social worker. She later enrolled at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto and acquired a Master of Education degree. It was there she studied “narrative inquiry and personal experience,” which sparked a natural transition into writing.

Muskoka was not just a pretty place to retire for Brewer – it was medicine. “My husband was going through serious health issues and is still recovering from lung cancer,” Brewer explains. “We would huddle in our small cottage in front of the wood stove and he could recover from his chemo treatments and I could catch my breath as his caretaker. At the same time, I was trying to help my sister find a different path than the one she was heading down.”

Dance Into The Light is the manifestation of this journey, a candid account of the experience of holding space for a close family member battling addiction and mental health issues. In the memoir, Brewer gives readers an intimate view of how she handled the trauma of finding her younger sister Jacquelin after she had committed suicide. As the title suggests, it’s through the therapeutic writing process that Brewer is able to move from heartbreak to healing.

From the sanctuary she found in Muskoka, Brewer worked closely with her therapist to bring the memoir to fruition in a way that was beneficial; not only to the writer and the narrative but also to an audience that could benefit from the work.

“Using nature in both my writing and my grief work really helped me,” shares Brewer. “Especially being in water. I do a lot of kayaking because it helps me let go of frustrations that I'm carrying around and that’s when new ideas come to me. And I’m inspired by the way there’s always something different to notice about water when you look at it from one moment to the next.”

Another essential ingredient in Brewer’s creative process is being part of various writing communities in Toronto and Muskoka. It was through her involvement with the library groups in Gravenhurst, Bracebridge and Baysville, she was introduced to the Muskoka Authors’ Association (MAA). 

“Sharing your writing is really putting yourself out there,” Brewers says. “But this community has been so welcoming, and it felt really safe to do that here. At that time, my dad’s health was failing, my mom had just died, my husband was battling cancer, and my sister was struggling. But I didn't talk about any of that. It was just a safe place to leave my troubles behind and just be a writer.”

Brewer also credits her recovery to first responders and Victim Services in Toronto. “When I found that my sister took her life and called 911, the first responders were wonderful,” Brewer recalls. “A few days later, a woman from Victim Services called me. She really let me be vulnerable and normalized what I was going through. She also told me about the Toronto Distress Centre and highly recommended that I go there, which was a program for suicide loss survivors. This is when I first really started working through my trauma.”

During this critical time, Brewer also started seeing a cognitive behavioural therapist. Around her third or fourth session, she felt strongly that she needed to write about her experience. Her therapist agreed and added there is a need for more stories from the family perspective. Brewer wisely took another year or so before she felt ready to tackle the project.

“I followed my intuition about knowing when it was time,” Brewer says. “It wasn't about going through the trauma again but to talk about mental illness in the family and finding hope after death. It’s the teacher in me – I guess in some way I was still wanting to teach and share.”

If there’s a cohesive message behind

Dance Into The Light, it’s that vulnerability is constructive and keeping secrets is destructive. “We don't have to be stoic about this stuff,” Brewer explains. “I think the reason why some people find the book a little bit hard to read is because I don't anything hold back. I really showed my vulnerability on the page, which can be difficult for some, even though it's not all sad. Mostly it's about love and hope. My sister was a funny person, quite sarcastic. So that's in there, too. But it’s messy because the story of grief can’t be told in sequence – it’s all over the place.”

As a life-long educator, Brewer teaches herself and others, the various ways writing can be therapeutic. The book she’s currently editing, No One Knew, is the fictional story that gave her relief from the real-life story she was living in Dance Into The Light.

“I was writing No One Knew while my sister was acting out,” recalls Brewer. “And I escaped into that book. I liked my characters and I enjoyed creating them. It was a sanctuary for me, like the cottage, because it was my own drama.” 

The courage it took to publish Dance Into The Light was well worth mustering for Brewer. “It was very healing,” she says. “I was dwelling in it but in a constructive way. I was able to take myself out of the story and analyze my own experience from the outside. Also, I felt like I got to be with my sister a little bit longer because as I was researching our story through my journals, she came alive again.”

Starting this spring, Brewer will be reading in the Tall Pine Tales series offered by the Muskoka Authors Association. Look for her at the Gravenhurst Library June 24 at 6:30pm, Baysville Library on July 30 at 7pm, Bracebridge Library on September 20 at 1pm, and Huntsville Library on October 16 at 6pm.